د عدلي الهواري

To be able to determine to what extent isolation was a decisive force in dictating the direction of the U.S. foreign policy or merely a myth, one should shed some light on the concept of isolation, including a brief historical background and definition. After doing so, this essay would concentrate on isolation in the years preceding the US entry into the Second World War in 1941.

In the early years of the Federal Republic, i.e., in the late eighteenth century, isolation to the people of the newly independent republic meant isolation from Europe and its disputes. According to Alexander DeConde, this principle was the “most fundamental theory of foreign policy,”[1] and “it appeared to be naturally ordained and permanent condition and something distinctively American.”[2] DeConde pointed out “no administration in the nineteenth century departed from an isolationist policy nor did any need to.”[3] He also noted “only in the twentieth century did statesmen seriously challenge isolation.”[4]

The first serious challenge to isolation in the twentieth century was by President Woodrow Wilson at the time of the First World War in which the US took part. This challenge however did not fully succeed in making the US abandon for good the principle of isolation. Soon after the First World War, the US reverted to its isolation which was also ensured by four Neutrality Acts during the 1930s despite the many ominous events in different parts of the world. It would be worthwhile therefore to look briefly at the international scene during this particularly important decade.

The 1930s saw the Italian-Ethiopian war; the remi1itarization of the Rhine; the civil war in Spain; Germany’s occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia; Japan’s aggression against Manchuria and China; the Soviet-German Pact; and the German occupation of Poland. The latter act led to Britain’s declaration of war on Germany.

As indicated earlier, America’s isolation from Europe and its conflicts was guaranteed in the 1930s by the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939. The Acts of 1935 and 1937 made it “unlawful to export arms, ammunition, or implements of war from any place in the United States or [its] possessions” to any of the warring countries. The 1937 Act made it “unlawful for any citizen of the United States to travel on any vessel of state or states” involved in a war. The last of the these Acts, that of 1939, allowed selling arms and ammunitions to all countries on cash and carry basis, providing also that such materials were not transported on American vessels.

During the 1930s, furthermore, the Republicans and the Democrats competed with one another “in promising the neutrality and isolationism” of the United States.[5] Slowly but surely, this ceased to be the case. Two forces were increasingly pulling the US in opposite directions: the isolationists on the one hand, and the interventionists on the other.

The isolationists were those who argued that “it was more important for the US to keep out of war than to assure a British victory over the Axis.”[6] The interventionists, on the other hand, argued the opposite, i.e., “a British victory over the Axis was more important for the US than staying out of the ‘European War’.”[7]

Both sides formed committees to argue their cases and rally support for their points of view. America First Committee was the isolationists’ main committee. Among its principles were:[8]

1. American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.

2. “Aid short of war” weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.

Some of the objectives the Committee wanted to achieve included:[9]

1. To provide sane national leadership for the majority of the American people who want to keep out of the European war.

2. To register this opinion with the President and with the Congress.

The founder of America First Committee was R. Douglas Stuart, a student of international relations at Princeton University and later at the law school at Yale University.[10] Members of the Committee came from diverse ethnic, political, and religious groups, including German-Americans, Irish-Americans, Catholics, communists, pro-Nazis, pro-Fascists, and others.[11] However, the Committee enlisted and enjoyed the support of prominent leaders: religious, political, academic, and otherwise.[12]

The debate between the isolationists and their opponents involved legislative battles in Congress. Initially, the isolationists had their way. Selig Adler described the Neutrality Act of 1937 as “that consummate triumph of the isolationists.”[13]

How come then the isolationists could not keep America at the end of the day out the Second World War? The answer to this question would be found, in part, in the fact that the isolationists were not a homogeneous group. The man who challenged and finally defeated the isolationists, President Roosevelt, “questioned” their loyalty to their country and labeled them as Nazis.[14] “By thinking of his opponents in this manner,” Richard Steele noted, “Roosevelt denied the legitimacy of the claims and hence their right to be heard.”[15]

Curiously, however, FDR was seen by some historians as a genuine isolationist himself at the beginning of his presidential years. Robert A. Divine, for example, said “Roosevelt pursued and isolationist policy, refusing to commit the United States to the defense of the existing international order. He accepted a series of isolationist neutrality laws passed by Congress, objecting only to those provisions which infringed his freedom of action as president.”[16]

James M. Burn, on the other hand, saw FDR as a “more pussyfooting politician than a political leader. He [FDR] seemed to float almost helplessly on the flood tide of isolationism, rather than seek to change both the popular attitude and the apathy that buttressed the isolationists strength.”[17]

At this stage, therefore, one could suggest that isolationism in American foreign policy was a force to reckon with. America’s emergence from its isolation was a very slow process. It took FDR several years before he was finally able to take the country into the war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) helped a great deal, of course. As Wayne S. Cole observed, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor “terminated the spectacular foreign policy debate which had been provoked by World War II.”[18]

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, furthermore, “shattered”[19] the America First Committee. “Included in the debris,” Cole noted, “was the shattered corpse of the America First Committee.”[20] America’s isolationism was destroyed then once and for all. The USA from that time onward became, and still is, a world power.

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Notes

[1] Alexander DeConde, Isolation and Security: Ideas and Interests in Twentieth-Century American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1957), 3.

[2] DeConde, Isolation and Security, 3.

[3] DeConde, Isolation and Security, 3.

[4] DeConde, Isolation and Security, 3.

[5] Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), 275.

[6] Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention 1940-1941 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), 6.

[7] Cole, America First, 6.

[8] Cole, America First, 15.

[9] Cole, America First,16.

[10] Cole, America First, 10-15.

[11] DeConde, Isolation and Security, 12-13.

[12] Cole, America First, 8-9.

[13] Adler, Isolationist Impulse, 274.

[14] Richard Steele, “Roosevelt’s Campaign Against his Isolationist Critics,” in Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Policy: Documents and Essays (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1984), 192.

[15] Steele, Roosevelt’s Campaign, 192.

[16] Robert A. Divine, “Roosevelt the Isolationist,” in Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Policy: Documents and Essays (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1984), 69.

[17] James M. Burns, “The Cautious Politician as Foreign Policy Maker,” in Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Policy: Documents and Essays (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1984), 186.

[18] Cole, America First, 3.

[19] Adler, Isolationist Impulse, 320.

[20] Cole, America First, 3.